2.1 The preferred spelling (apart from hyphenation, which may be different) is that listed first in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. This means, in general, that British spellings will be favoured, e.g., theatre, harbour.

2.2 For personal and family names, be particularly careful with such sound-alikes as Jean and Jeanne, Brian and Bryan, MacDonald and Macdonald. Do not leave off accents from foreign names, even when upper case, e.g., Cécile, CÉCILE.

2.3 Other than in direct quotation from published sources, use the spelling "no one" rather than "no-one". [Revised 20/11/05. Our preference for "noone" was widely ignored.]

3.2 Do not hyphenate compound modifiers when the first term is an adverb ending in -ly, e.g., highly respected author.

3.3 Fuse such prefixes as pre-, post-, anti-, ante-, and non- with the following term, even if this results in a double vowel. Retain the hyphen, however, when these precede a proper noun, eg, pre-Madonna, or a compound that is itself hyphenated, e.g., non-split-pea soup.

3.4 Use a suspended hyphen for each modifier of a single term, e.g., long- or short-limbed adults.

3.5 Use a hyphen in such compounds as four-year-olds (noun) and four-year-old brother (adjective). But leave out the hyphens when age is expressed thus: He was four years old. The same is true of measurements, eg, "Besides the 6-inch ruler, he had one that was 12 inches long." [See also Numbers.]

3.6 Use a hyphen in spelled-out fractions, e.g., one-half, two-thirds.

6.1 Use the serial comma after the next-to-last term in a series of three or more, e.g., tall, dark, and handsome celebrity.

6.2 For long parentheses, use brackets rather than dashes. Put the end punctuation inside the bracket when the parenthesis is a complete sentence and outside when it is a sentence fragment.

6.3 In dialogue, such introductory verbs as said, asked, and cried are followed by a comma or a colon, eg, He cried, "Hang on!". They are preceded by a comma when this order is inverted, e.g., "I am," she said -- unless the sentence quoted ends with a question mark or an exclamation point , eg, "Hang on!" he cried.

6.4 Use double quotation marks first and then single quotation marks, e.g., "I wondered what he meant when he said, `Hang on!' ".

6.5 Put the end punctuation inside the quotation marks when the quotation is a complete sentence and outside when it is a sentence fragment. [Revised 20/11/05: we now incline to the more usual North American practice of having end punctuation inside the quotation marks in both instances.]